First Impression: Persona 3 Portable

Since I've been wasting close to 2 hours everyday just being a sitting duck in the bus on the way to university and back home, I often spend those time playing PSP (if I'm not tied with any major assignment). Early this month, the english version of Persona 3 Portable (P3P), the enhanced remake of PS2 awesome rpg Persona 3 FES into PSP was released, and since I've just submitted my assignent a few weeks ago, I decided to try this game.

Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 Portable is an enhanced remake of Persona 3 for the PlayStation Portable. Player would have the option to play as a female character. This selection alters some aspects of the story: the first Persona gained by the Protagonist, Orpheus, will have a different appearance; Igor's assistant in the Velvet Room, Elizabeth, can be replaced with a male equivalent named Theodore. The gender choice also alters some aspects of the Social Link stories. Persona 3 Portable only includes the story of the original Persona 3.

The game's revised battle system draws on elements added in Persona 3's successor, Persona 4. In combat, the player is able to directly control every character, as an alternative to utilizing the game's artificial intelligence. The ability to guard has been added, and allies will take fatal attacks for the Protagonist, preventing his or her death. Outside of Tartarus, instead of navigating the game world by directly controlling the Protagonist, the player guides an on-screen cursor around an area, allowing interaction with characters and objects. The game includes the voice acting of the original game, although characters are not shown in the world, instead being represented by on-screen portraits. Several cameos of characters from Persona 4 have been added to Persona 3 Portable, including Yukiko Amagi, a playable character from Persona 4.

Developers: Atlus
Platform: PlayStation Portable (PSP)
Genre: Tactical RPG
Release date: Nov 2009 (JP); July 2010 (ENG)

After playing for a few hours (at 16/6), I have to say that this Persona 3 remake was AWESOME. As said above, the game now allows you to pick either a male or female main character to begin the game. Picking male will essentially made you play the exact same Persona 3 FES story, while picking female protagonist will gave you some slight alteration in Social Links and dialogues, and gave new perspective to the players, or so the game stated. Since I've previously played Persona 3 on PS2, I decided to play P3P as female protagonist (don't mind being a les...omg).

Nevertheless, for some reason I can barely recall the difference between P3 and P4, and hence I don't really notice major changes in the gameplay of P3P. The gameplay was pretty similar to P3/P4 and players who have played these games will definitely have no problem adapting to P3P gameplay. One major thing I noticed is that we can heal inside Tartarus for MUCH cheaper price than in P4. Additionally, your party never seem to get tired until after you leave Tartarus, although they did complained that they're tired. Hence it's a really good bonus if I want to grind the hell out of the Tartarus for hours without worrying about fatigue. Elemental weakness, "One More", "All-Out-Attack", "Co-op Attack" remained pretty much the same.

Outside battle, we don't actually have sprites to represent your characters. Dialogue/scenes and town navigation follows what you often see in visual novel, where we move a pointer from one spot to another in order to go to a certain place while dialogues only features characters with changing facial expressions. Nice way to simplify things I'd say. Other than that, you can also choose who's going to be Igor's assistant in the Velvet Room - either the same Elizabeth in P3, or the male counterpart, Theodore. Being a female protagonist, I picked Theo and didn't regret my choice because he's really one amusing character, especially when he went to date with my female character around the town :3

Graphic wise, there's not much changes. Apart from visual novel-style cutscenes, the animation scenes were also changed into CG scenes. The same goes for musics/ost. For most of the part, it looks to me that P3P still retained the same bgm from P3, except maybe in a few part of the game. The intro was nice though.

Lastly, the Social Links. Picking a female main character slightly changed some of the Social Links (eg Hermit and Chariot). And like P4, you can even form Lovers relationship with several males.... including Akihiko, Junpei (!), Ken (!), Ryouji and Theo... damn I don't know if I should say "awsm" here. Nevertheless, I feel that Social Link ranking in P3P wasn't as significant as it used to be in P4 (I totally forgot what it did in P4 though), beside creating the final Persona. Anyway, Rio ♥

Overall, I have to say that I am very satisfied with P3p so far. Being ported to PSP doesn't mean the game was downgraded, and P3P certainly isn't, the addition of female character in fact even make things even more interesting. There seems to be a lot more to be offered in term of sidequest, new game plus etc, I am definitely looking forward to the rest of the contents (Yukiko cameo ftw). A DEFINITE MUST PLAY for Persona fans.


p/s - Kenji: "I like you as much as I like Ramen" I LOL'd

I named my female lead character as Mizuhara Haruka. I kinda lol when I found that one of the Social Link NPC also has the exact same last name. Coincidence much :p